After a string of somewhat lacklustre albums Heart reinvented themselves as mainstream rockers, got picked up by Capitol Records and dropped one of their biggest albums ever in 1985. The band employed outside writers on over half of the tracks including the rejected Toronto track "What About Love" that became the band's first big hit in years, and after that the hits kept coming "These Dreams" which would go all the way to number one, along with "Never" and "Nothin' at All", and "If Looks Could Kill" which was pretty cool.
I wonder how much of this was right place, right time ... whatever the case Heart was back, and the album would sell over 600,000 in Canada, and over 5,000,000 in the States. Not bad considering their previous two records hadn't gone gold, and the band seemed to be done.
Heart is one of those bands I never really gave much though to. When I was a kid I absolutely loved "Barracuda" and "Magic Man" and then I sort of fell off. I never bought any of their records ... although I did pick up
Passionworks because I liked one song ... for the guitar solo. I can't remember the name of the song without looking. I've mentioned it before ... I tend to repeat myself after a while.
Listening to Heart now is kind of fun. I mean they were going for the mainstream, and boy howdy they weren't swimming against the current. The album was produced and engineered by Ron Nevison and the album absolutely shimmers.
The band was solid with Mark Andes on bass, Howard Leese on guitar, keys and mandolin, and Denny Carmassi on drums. In the smaller print synth whiz Peter Wolf played keys and was credited with "creative" input. From Heart to the Commodores he was doing his thing.
I suppose to the hardcore fans who'd been along since '75 this new sound a decade later must have seemed like the band was selling out. Sell out they did as the '85 self titled released outsold the band's first three classic albums combined.
Does that make this one better?
Absolutely not but it is pretty bloody good. It's funny as I'd just listened to
Bad Animals a couple of months ago and for whatever reason (it may have been a lack of coffee) the album just didn't have any legs for me ... that day.
It's absolutely astounding to think this album is forty years old. Not everything has held up but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at how many of the songs I recognized and how good they sounded to these old ears.
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